Monsters & Empire, page 3
“With slaves,” Eclason finished.
She bared her fangs. Images of her times in the mines flashed through both their minds.
Eclason talked. Talking spackled over his telepathic curse and kept the thoughts of others at bay. “Yes, I get it. That has to be horribly insulting, aggravating, and rage inducing for you. But also, yes, they think that. Never mind why at the moment.” He fished hopefully. “I don’t suppose you do have a secret exit to the subway system?”
She shook her head no.
“The coal tunnels?” he asked optimistically.
He felt her admiration for his knowledge of Chicago’s subterranean architecture, but cocking her head the other way, Grendel hissed through her fangs. “Those are downtown. The nearest one is over a mile from here.”
“What about the fallout shelter beneath the University of Illinois?” he asked in a last bout of hope.
“No.”
Eclason sighed. “It couldn’t be that easy. None of this is going to plan.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What—”
Eclason ran his hand through his hair. “You’re right, I am already asking you for one miracle and have no right to ask you for more. I’ll leave and lose them some other way. It’s not your concern.” He mentally checked on Gray and Kurt, who were currently still on the roof. He breathed a sigh of relief, but then choked on it. “Oh, shit.”
“This doesn’t feel right,” Gray said, crouching low on the roof. The late afternoon sun warmed his back, yet he felt cold in his gut.
“Jesus Christ, not this again,” Kurt replied.
“Reliance on Old Gods is Common,” Gray said, skin prickling. Kurt was always drilling that into his head. He glanced at Kurt, kneeling beside him. They’d worn civilian clothing over their armor until they’d leaped onto the rooftop; it lay stacked and folded at their feet, but they hadn’t pulled their hoods up or their cowls over their faces.
Kurt was focused on the door Eclason had vanished into minutes before. The doorway didn’t look like the entrance to the opulent lair of the most dangerous Vampire that had ever existed. It looked humble. Lonely. Grendel was supposed to have slaves—shouldn’t they be coming and going, doing chores for their soon-to-be-waking mistress?
“You’ve just got nerves,” Kurt replied, gaze intent on the target.
Gray glanced up at the brilliant blue sky above them. Giant sparkling white clouds—not the sort that warned of storms—floated above, drifting like airborne islands. They made Gray wish he could fly. The sky, the clouds, the warm sun on his back, all those things should put him at ease. And yet …
“Not that you should be nervous,” Kurt said. “We’re only on a mission to destroy the Vampire that killed the Queen, Aion, Gil, and Gareth and left Eclason, Trent, and Beowulf damaged.” Kurt spit the last word. His brow furrowed. “Eclason shouldn’t be in charge of this mission. He is a shitty hunter.”
Eclason was not a powerful Vampire hunter. Still, compared to the fates of the others Grendel had faced, Eclason had gotten off easy. After being rendered unconscious for a few days, Eclason made a full recovery, with his memories intact. His personality had changed, though. He used to be the chattiest guy in the Order, but this entire mission he’d been quiet. His gabbiness used to annoy Gray—it used to annoy everyone. Eclason’s silence had left Gray feeling … exposed. He’d felt sometimes that the older hunter was staring straight into his soul. “Grendel didn’t kill us, either,” Gray said. She’d just knocked them off their transports. “It makes me uneasy—the most powerful Vampire that ever existed should have killed us.”
Kurt exhaled. “You’re sad she didn’t?”
“No, but neither of us is powerful—”
“Speak for yourself,” Kurt said.
“We’re rookies. We’ve never killed a Vampire before,” Gray continued. “We’re only here by accident, and you know it.” The accident being that Eclason had finally, inexplicably, gotten permission from Prime Theo to hunt Grendel. Eclason had left the hour he’d received permission. The Order commanded Gray and Kurt to join him, most likely because they were in Sunland already, and closest.
A buzz near his ear and a needle of pain above his jugular made Gray’s hand shoot up. He smacked the side of his neck and then stared down at the blood smeared on his palm.
Kurt winced and smacked his own neck. He put his blood-stained palm beside Gray’s. “There. We’ve both killed blood suckers now.”
“They bit us first,” Gray pointed out.
“What is wrong with you today?” Kurt asked.
“It’s not today,” Gray said. “That’s the problem. It’s been every day since we fought with Grendel.” The night they’d chased the beat-up pickup over Kentucky’s back roads came back with crisp clarity. “Did she look like the femme fatale we keep hearing about?”
“She was too far away to see. But she had the platinum blonde hair—”
“It looked white.” Gray remembered it, framing the Vampire’s pale face.
“That’s what platinum blonde looks like, Gray.”
“She wore hiking gear,” Gray remembered.
“Beautiful women can’t go hiking in practical clothing?” Kurt asked.
“The pickup was a clunker. Wouldn’t a Vampire with an obscenely opulent lair be too vain to drive a clunker?”
“She was desperate!” Kurt shot back.
“In the Ember, her emotions were … protective,” Gray said. Grendel’s emotions reminded him of his brother’s and sister’s protectiveness when he’d told them he didn't want to go back to the Order. His sister had said, “We’ll support you.” His brother added, “You don’t have to be a sacrificial lamb for us.” And they had meant it. But of course, once his mother and father had submitted him to training, he’d had to remain or bring shame down on them all.
He stared at the blood on his hand. “There are rumors she was Bayo’s lover.”
Kurt rounded on him. “Shut up! Beowulf is the best of us. He didn’t … and if he did, it was to control her, to manipulate her.”
“So why didn’t he kill her?” Gray asked.
Kurt exhaled. “He freed thousands of people, Gray.”
“Some say she helped,” Gray said.
“See,” Kurt said. “He was manipulating her.” His shoulders fell. “And if he wasn’t … it wouldn’t be the first time the man let his dick do his thinking for him.” He shook his head. “It’s always been Bayo’s weakness. You remember that whore in town we saw him with.”
Gray’s skin crawled with wrongness. Anger, hot and orange, flared in his chest. He pressed his lips together.
Turning to him, Kurt whispered, “We saw them together …”
They’d never talked about it. Gray had thought they had an unspoken agreement that they never would. Bayo was the best of them. Bayo wasn’t the strongest or the fastest, but when Gray was caught in the sea-monster’s maw, it was Bayo who’d come for him. He remembered the air in his lungs becoming sour; the water growing darker and colder, and the pressure in his ears making him feel as though his head would implode—but it did not surprise him that it was Bayo who followed him into the deep.
Kurt and Gray were younger than Bayo by two years, and also the youngest members of their own class. For a long time, that meant they’d been the smallest and weakest members of the Order. They’d been the targets of bullies, but Bayo had thrashed anyone who’d come after them—or tried to—no matter how big the fellows were. Eclason had always been with him, hanging back like a shadow. Bayo had always been the leader.
In long hikes through the desert, when Kurt and Gray fell behind, Bayo would march backward ahead of them and shout, “Come on! You can do it!” Bayo’s Magickal aura had shone around him like sunlight—and though Bayo’s voice had been cracking and raspy from thirst, somehow it had given Gray strength to go on. Sometimes he’d felt like it was the only reason he’d survived those early days.
“Whores have sex for money,” Gray said, tasting bile in his mouth.
“What is your point?” Kurt said.
“Bayo had no money. She wasn’t a whore,” Gray whispered.
Kurt rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”
For a moment, the only sounds were the cry of cicadas in the surrounding trees and the closer intermittent buzz of mosquitos.
Kurt slapped another one. “This place was a fucking swamp. Still is.”
“Did Bayo seem Fae Shocked to you on the trip back to Sunland?” Gray asked.
Kurt didn’t answer.
“He didn’t seem Fae Shocked to me, either,” Gray said. “And he remembered this place on the trip back… he touched Eclason’s arm on the train and remembered this entrance to Grendel’s lair, and that’s why we’re here.”
A car door slammed in the distance. Somewhere closer, someone threw meat on a grill, and the scent mixed with the odors of hot tar and concrete.
Gray stared hard at the supposed entrance to Grendel’s lair. “Have you felt like Eclason never wanted us on this mission?”
“Of course, I’ve felt that,” Kurt replied. “He probably wants to kill Grendel all by himself.” Kurt’s Magick surged. “Fuck it. You’re right. Something is wrong. We’re going in.”
“‘Oh shit,’ what?” the Vampire asked.
“They’re coming—” Eclason replied.
Grendel’s ghosts hissed, “He led them to you!”
Hissing at her ghosts and him, the Vampire jogged to the door, her movements strong for a woman. She reset her locks, including the Magickal dissuasion lock. “That should keep them occupied for a minute.”
Eclason shook his head. “Kurt will bust through the dissuasion lock with a thought.”
Shooting a glare at him, she spoke into the compact mirror. “Captain Kirk to Enterprise.”
Eclason blinked. “I’ll go—”
She held up a finger for silence, her mind a place of frantic activity, but no coherent thoughts.
Eclason had been worried. He started to worry more. Bayo’s mind did this too-fast-to- read-rapid-fire-thinking right before he did something crazy. In Bayo, it was accompanied by more self-confidence than anyone should have—although, to be fair, that faith extended to his companions as well. The Vampire just radiated rage.
“Grandmother?” A woman’s voice rippled through the apartment. Eclason blinked again. A Magickal woman with East Asian—or maybe Native American—features shimmered in the mirror in the corner. Her brown eyes sparkled beneath straight black bangs, and her Magickal aura flickered like she was backlit by a thousand stars.
“Mizuki, this is Eclason … he’s a member of Bayo’s Order, but my dissuasion lock didn’t dissuade him, which I think means he’s okay.”
She’d surmised correctly. He could have broken it, but he didn’t have to. He nodded. Neither woman noticed.
Grendel continued. “He’s got two friends outside, though, that will be coming into my home to kill me in just a moment. I need you to take care of them.”
Alarm flared across the Ember from Mizuki. “My Magick is weak at the moment …”
Eclason wondered what Mizuki’s Magick was like when it was strong, but he’d never find out. “I don’t want them killed,” Eclason said. “Neither one is Gil, or even close. I’ll leave—”
Grendel hissed and grabbed his arm, teeth bared. “I’m not planning on killing them, and you aren’t going anywhere. You want to defect, right?”
Mizuki’s interest sparked through the mirror.
Eclason nodded. “I want to defect—you have no idea how much—but you have to live, or my defection means nothing. They’ll be here in minutes. I’ll find another way.”
“No,” Grendel growled.
“I have an idea,” Mizuki said, but then vanished.
Eclason tried to withdraw his arms. “No, whatever you’re planning—”
Grendel dug her claws into Eclason’s arm and leaned closer, fangs fully extended. The Ember fired with determination, violence, and a protectiveness he’d felt one time on a mission when he’d come between a puma and her cubs. “You want me to rescue Bayo—that will not happen unless you give me this now.”
“Give you what?” Eclason asked, pulling back. He had a feeling he wouldn’t like the answer.
She smiled, her fangs bright and sharp. “You need to die.”
“Mmmm … yummy,” said her ghosts.
On the roof beside the basement apartment, Gray and Kurt pulled their hoods up and their cowls over their faces.
Gray’s unease didn’t diminish. “Eclason told us to wait for him.”
The Ember rippled with Kurt’s exasperation. “You said waiting felt wrong.”
Gray shifted on his heels, tuning into the Ember. “This feels wrong, too.”
Kurt huffed and jumped the three stories to the alley below.
Gray assured himself they weren’t being watched—their armor was almost invisible to human eyes but wasn’t invisible to animal noses. A mosquito buzzed by his ear. They weren’t invisible to mosquitos, either. Gray ignored it. With his hood up and cowl down, his armor was nearly impenetrable. The mosquito buzzed lower, and a sharp needle of pain shot from just below his jaw. The damn thing had found the seam between his mask and the collar of his suit. Cursing, Gray smacked it, and then leaped over the edge. He landed in a crouch in the relative coolness and dim of the shadowed alleyway. Kurt was at the bottom of the sunken staircase, hand pressed against a Magickal lock, Ember gathering around him like a shining second suit of armor.
“Wait!” Gray hissed, but too late. A crack echoed through the alley, and the lock’s Magick spell shattered.
Kurt looked back at him.
“What sort of spell was on that?” Gray asked, every hair on the back of his neck standing on end.
Kurt shrugged. “Didn’t notice. Doesn’t matter.”
“We should know what sort of spell it was. It could tell us what sort of place this is,” Gray insisted.
Kurt cocked his head. “Well … it wasn’t a fear spell. I wasn’t afraid when I broke it.”
Kurt was bragging, and Gray scowled behind his cowl. “That narrows it down to over a dozen possibilities. It could have been a reinforcement spell, or one for recognition, a spell for visibility at night, a timer, dissuasion, protection from evil, or a ward against solicitors, fire, flood, thieves, fae, or invisibility—”
“It wasn’t invisible, and I didn’t even feel apprehensive,” Kurt said.
“I feel apprehensive,” Gray snipped.
“Which is why we’re going inside,” Kurt snapped back. He turned back to the door, waved a hand, and several soft clicks sounded at once. Kurt put his hand on the doorknob and said, “You coming?”
Gut churning, Gray jogged over. Kurt pushed the door open and stepped into the darkness beyond before Gray reached the bottom stairs. Fear and fury rippled through the Ember, and the acrid scent of burnt hair wafted in the air, making Gray’s heart race. He jumped down the steps and followed his friend.
The interior was dark. The only light came from behind them, framing them in silhouette, exposing them to whatever monster might lurk within. Instead of taking cover, Kurt stood stock still, and for an instant, Gray wondered if he was enchanted. But then Kurt’s emotions rippled through the Ember: shock and disorientation, but more than either of those, embarrassment.
Squinting past Kurt, Gray spied a white-haired old woman. Sitting in a threadbare armchair, wearing a pair of plaid pajamas and enormous fuzzy socks, she scowled up at them from behind a pair of spectacles. The fury and fear he’d felt were hers. She’d pulled her feet up into the chair, recoiling in fear and shock, and it was their fault.
“Err …” said Kurt.
The woman huffed, fearful and aggravated.
“This isn’t her. She’s just an old lady. And the place is a dump.” Kurt whispered it, but whispered so loudly Gray suspected that anyone passing in the alley would hear.
“A dump?” the woman declared. She shook a worn-looking child’s toy at them. It jangled when she shook it. “This is my home!” Her voice dropped to a grumble. “It’s not enough for you to break in and destroy my locks. Oh, no, you insult my home too!”
Her sense of insult rolled through the Ember. Caught in its wave, Gray froze. Only his eyes, somewhat adjusted to the dim, moved, surveying the room. “Sorry, ma’am. It’s … very clean,” he said. And it was, although he could touch the ceiling if he reached up, and the floor was uneven concrete, poured over tree roots and boulders. The room appeared to serve as kitchen, dining room, and sitting area. Her chair was perpendicular to the entrance. A couch sat at an angle, so he saw its back, and another chair faced the door. There also appeared to be a bathtub concealed behind a screen in one corner. He noted bookshelves, and more bookshelves, a wood-burning stove—perhaps the source of the smell? Had the woman been burning pre-Change garbage for heat? The scent reminded him of burnt plastic, but also of hair. The day was warm, but her home was almost too cool, and impoverished people burned things scavenged from the pre-Change dumping grounds. But he wasn’t sure if this woman was poor, precisely. A Magickal full-length mirror reflected the room in one corner, and a Magickal tapestry hung on the wall displaying the street outside. To their left, framed photos and children’s artwork covered the wall above the bookshelf.
Except for the acrid scent, everything indicated they’d invaded the home of a napping grandmother who wasn’t rich or poor but was loved. And yet …
“Let’s go,” Kurt said to Gray. “She can’t identify us.”
Gray’s Magick was surging within him, uncalled for and irrepressible. His legs felt like they had turned to lead, and he couldn’t move. “Where is Eclason?”
Kurt whispered again. “You know how he’s better than everyone at throwing his voice and sneaking right past you.”
Gray shivered. Eclason was an expert at making you imagine you’d heard him, or whatever silly sound effect he’d made—a cat’s meow, a dog’s growl, or the ticktock of a clock—as though it were just behind you.
“Another one of you was sneaking around my home?” the old woman asked. Her nostrils flared. It struck Gray that her features, even the lines beside her mouth, at the corners of her eyes, and between her brows were fine and symmetrical. It was as though an artist had been commissioned to draw an idealized version of a fifty-year-old woman.
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